Getting Rich

Abe Lincoln’s historic mistake at Gettysburg

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Today is the last day to get Shaina Keren’s course Get A Raise, at a special Bejako-only $50 discount.

If you work at a 9-5, I believe this course has the clearest and surest ROI of any course I have sold, bought, or even seen.

If you’re interested in taking advantage of this opportunity before it disappears, the full details on how to claim it are at the bottom of this email.

And now, with that important announcement out of the way, let me tell you that I have recently taken to memorizing stuff by heart.

First came a few famous poems by Williams Blake and Shakespeare.

After that, I memorized Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which I’d never even read before, even though it’s one of the most famous speeches of all time, and certainly the most famous by an American president.

Thing is, I found something frankly wrong inside the Gettysburg Address, which I wanted to share with you. After the famous “Four score and seven years ago” opening, Lincoln says the following:

“The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they [the soldiers who fought and died at Gettysburg] did here.”

I don’t know whether this is just humility or a lack of historical perspective.

But the fact is that the world greatly noted and has long remembered what Lincoln said at Gettysburg.

On the other hand, the world has largely forgotten what the soldiers did at Gettysburg. Was it a big battle? A small battle? Who won? Was it pivotal in the war or just a waste of human life?

And if you don’t agree with me, then think of the dozens of other major Civil War battles that didn’t have their own address by Lincoln. Unless you’re a Civil War buff, odds are you cannot name any of them.

Same goes for the thousands of major battles that have raged throughout history — completely nameless and forgotten, if they didn’t have a Lincoln or a Caesar or a Thucydides to write or speak about them.

My point is that Lincoln, in that statement that “the world can never forget what they did here,” fell into the usual trap of thinking that the act is ultimately what matters, rather than the presentation, the transferable image, the meme of the thing.

What I’m telling you is, if you build it, they will NOT come — not unless you do a good job telling the story of it. That’s true in history. It’s true in business. And it’s true equally in your own personal career.

Which brings me back to Shaina’s course. Because maybe you’re working at your job and you’re thinking, “I shouldn’t have to ask for a raise. They should just give me one based on how hard I work and the value I bring here. And certainly they will figure it out, in time. My boss will little note nor much appreciate my asking directly for more money, but he can never forget what I do at this company.”

If that’s what you’re secretly thinking, I’d like to tell you that history is not on your side. And if you want to take fate into your own hands, and make sure your boss notes and remembers what you do, and pays you accordingly, then here’s my suggestion:

1. Head on over to ​https://bejakovic.com/raise​ and get Shaina’s course. There’s no sales page for this baby, just an order form with a few testimonials (eg, “I still can’t believe I get to keep the job I love and feel well compensated.”)

2. Put in the code BEJAKOVIC50 at checkout. Make sure the price drops from $197 to $147 before you buy.

3. Go through the 1 hour or so of training, then apply it in the next few days or weeks, and profit, hopefully to the tune of tens of thousands of new dollars in salary.

The deadline for this offer is today, Thursday, June 26, at 12 midnight PST. After that, this special discount, of the people, by the people, for the people, shall perish from the earth.

Last call for Get A Raise

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This is the last email I will send to promote Shaina Keren’s course Get A Raise. The promise behind this course is straightforward and is right there in the title.

The background, in case you missed it, is that Shaina is a highly paid career coach and consultant.

She has helped lots of clients get major raises for the work they were already doing, from $15k on the low end all the way up to $250k on the high end.

Now here’s an unrelated fact:

When the 1,037-page book Gone With The Wind was published, some ankle-biter wrote, “Well, people may not like it very much but nobody can deny that it gives a lot of reading for your money.”

Shaina’s course doesn’t give you a lot of reading for your money.

It’s short — you can go through it in an under an hour.

It’s also stress-minimal. It’s easy to put into action, without causing you sweaty, sleepless nights as you anticipate the salary conversation you’re supposed to have with your boss. None of that. Just put together a doc, the way Shaina advises, and deliver it to your boss along with a 55-word script, which Shaina gives you.

How much can this be worth to you? I can’t say for sure. But as I’ve been saying all week, I believe Shaina’s course offerst the surest and biggest ROI of any course have bought, sold, or even seen.

And if you act by 12 midnight PST tonight, you can get $50 off the usual price, so you can get still more value for your money. If you’d like to do so:

1. Head on over to ​https://bejakovic.com/raise​ and get Shaina’s course. There’s no sales page for this baby, just an order form with a few testimonials (eg, “I still can’t believe I get to keep the job I love and feel well compensated.”)

2. Put in the code BEJAKOVIC50 at checkout. Make sure the price drops from $197 to $147 before you buy.

3. Go through the 1 hour or so of training, then apply it in the next few days or weeks, and profit, hopefully to the tune of tens of thousands of new dollars in salary.

The case against Get A Raise

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This week, I’m promoting Shaina Keren’s course Get A Raise. It’s only relevant to you if you’re actually working a 9-5 job and are getting paid a salary.

If you’re a business owner, a freelancer, or are simply retired and living on Tim Ferris’s palm-tree-and-hammock island and are reading this only because you’re bored out of your mind from not working, then clearly this course is not for you.

Still with me?

Good. I will assume you are working a 9-5.

In that case, as I’ve been saying all week, Shaina’s Get A Raise is the clearest and surest ROI of any course I have sold, bought, or even seen.

Shaina has gotten people salary increases from $60k to $250k, and pretty much everybody — or literally everybody — Shaina has coached on this has gotten a significant raise.

I got on a call with Shaina before agreeing to promote her course. I asked her how she got such consistent and large salary increases for her clients.

And… the dark secret came out. Shaina explained:

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I would vet people, and if I thought you could get a raise, and where your desk is positioned, what the dynamics are in the workforce, I was very confident. I don’t think I ever worked with anyone who didn’t get it. I turned a lot of people away and I said, “You don’t deserve a raise, or where you’re working you do deserve it, but you’re simply not gonna get it.”

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Aha. So it’s a case of selection bias. I followed up to ask more specifically about the kinds of people she turned away. She explained:

– any government job — there are rules and they would rather fire you than break them

– medical industry or similar, with non-negotiable pay grades

– if you work for a very small business, which simply doesn’t have the budget

So if you have a job where your salary is literally non-negotiable — because you work in a highly regulated industry or field — or if there’s not enough money in the entire business to pay you what you deserve, then this course cannot help you, and you shouldn’t buy it.

Otherwise, buy this course. Apply it. And write me to tell me about the many thousands of extra dollars you are getting paid as a result.

Except, hold on.

If you are a careful reader, you might have spotted that Shaina also said she turned away people who did not deserve a raise. In other words, Shaina turned away people who were doing work that job simply wasn’t worth paying more for, even if there was money and opportunity in the business to do so.

If that’s you, you should still buy this course. Apply it. And write me to tell me about the many thousands of extra dollars you are getting paid as a result.

The only difference is, you won’t be able to apply this course by the end of this week.

If you don’t deserve a raise today, it will take up to six months for you to put together a list of convincing reasons — like Shaina teaches in the course — that you can then show off to your boss, and that you can use to legitimately ask for a raise, typically worth tens of thousands of dollars.

I won’t push much more. Again, I think this course is a complete no-brainer if you work a 9-5, when you compare what you can get out of it to what you have to put in.

Shaina’s coaching, the one that got people salary increases of $60k to $250k, cost $1,500, and it was a steal at that price.

Shaina had enough of doing those coaching calls, and she created the Get A Raise course with the same templates, scripts, and process she used in the coaching.

Get A Raise normally sells for $197. But because you’re a reader of this newsletter, you can get it for $50 off before tomorrow, so it’s just $147. At that price, it’s likely to be 1/100th of what you can stand to make with this info in the next year.

Plus, the course is quick to go through (less than an hour), and painless to apply, at least if you deserve a raise.

(If you don’t yet deserve a raise, again, it will take some work to start deserving a raise. I won’t sugarcoat it. But time is passing anyhow.)

In any case, the deadline for this offer is tomorrow, Thursday, June 26, at 12 midnight PST. If wanna take advantage of the current discount, here’s what to do:

1. Head on over to ​https://bejakovic.com/raise​. There’s no sales page for this baby, just an order form with a few testimonials (eg, “I still can’t believe I get to keep the job I love and feel well compensated.”)

2. Put in the code BEJAKOVIC50 at checkout. Make sure the price drops from $197 to $147 before you buy.

If you got questions or doubts, write me and I will address them either in private or, if appropriate, under the bright lights of this newsletter.

But as I wrote yesterday, I’ve never sold, bought, or even seen a course that offers such clear and direct ROI.

If you’re working a 9-5 job, and if you believe you’re not worth firing, then you are likely being underpaid, and Shaina’s course can help fix that.

Announcing: Get A Raise

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This week, I’m promoting Shaina Keren’s course Get A Raise.

Shaina is a career coach and counselor.

She has offered coaching previously to a small and select group of clients, on how to get a raise at their existing job. Results included salary raises of tens of thousands of dollars up to an extra $100k a year, for jobs ranging from non-profit work to sales.

I imagine there are not a lot of of non-profit people on my list. But I do know a good number of my customers work as in-house copywriters or have other 9-5 jobs.

If that’s you, and you wanna get paid more for the work you’re already doing, then here’s the deal:

1. Shaina’s course gives you the step-by-step, in under an hour. I’ve gone through the course myself, and basically, it tells you how to prepare your case and how to present it to your boss. It gives you templates and scripts for what exactly to say.

Like I wrote yesterday, this process is stress-minimal – it completely eliminates any tense haggling, fumbled presentations, or emotional staredowns.

Instead, you take a bit of time to prepare your case using Shaina’s proven approach, and you then deliver it to your boss along with a little 55-word script that you deliver AS-IS (don’t improvise).

2. Shaina’s coaching, where she walked people through this same process by hand, cost $1,500. It was a no-brainer for the people she worked with because, like I said, the results were salary increases in the tens of thousands of dollars or more.

Shaina’s Get A Raise course has the same information without the hand-holding. The course normally sells for $197, a fraction of what the coaching sells for.

Plus, as a special deal for you and you alone, because you happen to be a reader of this newsletter, you can now get an extra $50 off the regular price.

That means the current deal on Get A Raise makes the course just $147, 1/10th of Shaina’s coaching, which itself was 1/10th (or even less) of the salary increases that people who apply this process typically get.

This offer is good until this Thursday, June 26, at 12 midnight PST. If you wanna get it:

1. Head on over to ​https://bejakovic.com/raise​. There’s no sales page for this baby, just an order form with a few testimonials (eg, “I still can’t believe I get to keep the job I love and feel well compensated.”)

2. Put in the code BEJAKOVIC50 at checkout. Make sure the price drops from $197 to $147 before you buy.

If you got questions or doubts, write me and I will address them either in private or, if appropriate, under the bright lights of this newsletter.

But as I wrote yesterday, I’ve never sold, bought, or even seen a course that offers such clear and direct ROI.

If you’re working a 9-5 job, and if you believe you’re not worth firing, then you are likely being underpaid, and Shaina’s course can help fix that.

If you work at a 9-5

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Last month, I asked my readers if have they have amazing courses that they would love to have me promote to my audience.

Several people replied. But for various reasons, there was no course I was enthusiastic about promoting. All except one.

The background:

Career coach Shaina Keren, among her other services, helps people who have 9-5 jobs get paid more for the work they are already doing.

Shaina does this in one-on-one coaching sessions that cost $1,500.

It’s an easy sell for her, because pretty much anybody she chooses to work with gets a salary raise of multiple tens of thousands of dollars a year.

Eventually, Shaina put together the process inside her coaching sessions into a course, with the tantalizing title, “Get A Raise.” She proposed that I promote this course to my list.

Now, I happen to know that some of my best customers work as in-house copywriters, basically doing 9-5 (or more) office jobs.

Other of my readers are working 9-5 in other positions, and have no plans to exchange that life for the glamorous insecurity and grind of the self-employed.

In other words, I realized there’s a fair section of my audience who could benefit from what Shaina’s got.

After Shaina reached out to me with the idea I promote her course, I of course went through her course.

No, I wasn’t looking for a raise. I just wanted to know what Shaina’s process is to get these results for her clients, and if it’s something I could do a good job promoting to you.

I can tell you this:

Shaina’s process is simple. You can go through the course in less than an hour and know exactly what to do.

Shaina’s process is also stress-minimal.

I imagine, having worked once upon a time at a 9-5, that most people in that position don’t relish the idea of salary negotiation.

Well, Shaina’s system is as stress-free as I can imagine it being. All that’s involved is typically a 5-minute meeting, with minimal talking involved, and in fact, all the talking that’s required is a scripted 55 words.

And final point:

Shaina’s course costs significantly less than the $1,500 she charges to take people through the same process in her consulting calls.

And yet, even though I live and swim in the direct marketing world, where courses and info supposedly come with a clear and incontestable ROI, I have never sold, bought, or even seen info that has as clear or as incontestable an ROI as Shaina’s “Get A Raise” course.

All that’s to say, it was an easy decision to say yes to promoting Shaina’s course.

I will be promoting it starting tomorrow, with a special deal, available just during this promo, and just because you’re reading this newsletter. But more about all that in my next email.

Bombarded by water

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A-list copywriter Richard Armstrong once gave a talk in which he said how stupid it is to claim that we are “bombarded by information.” Says Richard:

“It makes no more sense to say we are bombarded with information than it would be to say that a fish is bombarded with water.”

A fish lives in water. It swims in water. It breathes water. In fact, it’s largely made up of water. And so it is with us and information.

I’m telling you this in case you are still on the fence about joining ChatGPT Mastery, which I’ve been promoting since Monday, and which will close to new members tonight, Thursday, at 12 midnight EST.

ChatGPT Mastery is about, well, mastering ChatGPT. And you may feel that info about ChatGPT is as abundant as ocean water. So why pay for it, and why pay the hefty $199 that ChatGPT Mastery asks of you?

The fact is, none of us have any hope of putting our arms, or fins, around the ocean. It’s too immense a body of water.

But there are small, local currents in the ocean which flow in the direction you want to go, and which take you there in less time and with less effort than it might take otherwise.

First, you either have to find these currents or have somebody else point them out. Second, and critically, you have to give these currents a chance to carry you along.

ChatGPT Mastery is one such forward-moving current, at least if your desired destination is automating parts of your business, freeing up your time, even (gasp!) increasing your productivity while working less.

I’ve pointed out this current for you. But you still have to give it a chance to carry you along.

Mind you, I’m not saying that paying for information guarantees you will benefit from it. I’d be a billionaire had I implemented and benefited from every info product I ever bought. And I’d be President of the U.S., due to sheer popularity, if all the people who bought stuff from me implemented and benefited from it. (Not really — The U.S. Constitution prohibits me from ever becoming president, since I wasn’t born in the U.S., but you get my point.)

That said, paying for info on how to master ChatGPT does make it more likely you will take this information for real and benefit from it.

As does the cohort nature of ChatGPT Mastery, with its start and end dates.

As does the fact that ChatGPT Mastery is delivered to your inbox daily, where you can’t ignore it as easily, and where it can keep nudging you to get some value from it.

You might think it’s silly of me to harp on these things. But I have been selling information online long enough that I know what a difference irrational things like these make to the value of information and teaching.

It’s these kinds of difference that actually allow you to slip inside that forward-moving current, so you can get carried along to your desired destination more quickly and easily.

Like I said, ChatGPT Mastery closes tonight at 12 midnight EST. If you’d like to find out more about it, specifically why I am endorsing it, here’s my original email from Monday:

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Today I’d like to recommend to you a 30-day program called ChatGPT Mastery, which is about… mastering ChatGPT, with the goal of having a kind of large and fast horse to ride on.

Here’s a list of exciting facts I’ve prepared for you about this new offer:

#1. ChatGPT Mastery is a cohort course — it kicks off and ends on a specific date — that helps you actually integrate and benefit from AI.

The idea being, things in the AI space are changing so fast that anything that came out even a few months ago is likely to be out of date.

And rather than saying “Oh let me spend a few dozen hours every quarter researching the latest advice on how to actually use this stuff” — because you won’t, just like I won’t – you can just get somebody else to do the work of cutting a path for you through the quickly regenerating AI jungle.

#2. I myself have gone through through ChatGPT Mastery, from A-Z, all 30 days, during the last cohort.

I didn’t pay for it because I was offered to get in for free.

I did go through it first and foremost for my own selfish interests — I feel a constant sense of guilt over not using AI enough in what I do — and only then with a secondary goal of promoting it if I benefited from it enough. So here I am.

#3. ChatGPT Mastery is created and run by Gasper Crepinsek. Gasper is an ex-Boston Consulting Group guy and from what I can tell, one of those hardworking and productive consulting types, the kind I look upon with a mixture of wonder and green envy.

But to hear Gasper tell it, he quit his consulting job to have more freedom, started creating info products online like everybody else, realized he had just bought himself another 70 hr/week job, and then had the idea to automate as much of it as he could with AI.

He’s largely succeeded — he now spends his mornings eating croissants and sipping coffee while strolling around Paris, because most of his work of content creation and social media and even his trip planning have been automated in large part or in full.

#4. Before I went through the 30 days of ChatGPT Mastery, I had already been using ChatGPT daily for a couple years. Inevitably, that means a good part of what Gasper teaches was familiar to me.

Other stuff he teaches was simply not relevant (I won’t be using ChatGPT to write my daily emails, thank you). The way I still benefited from ChatGPT Mastery was:

– By having my mind opened to using ChatGPT for things for things I hadn’t thought of before (just one example: I did a “dopamine reset” protocol over 4 weeks, which was frankly wonderful, and which ChatGPT designed for me, and which I got the idea for while doing ChatGPT Mastery)

– By seeing Gasper’s very structured, consulting-minded approach to automating various aspects of his business, and being inspired to port some of that to my own specific situation

– With several valuable meta-prompts that I continue to use, such as the prompt for generating custom GPTs

#5. The way you could benefit from ChatGPT Mastery is likely to be highly specific to what you do and who you are.

The program focuses on a different use case every day. Some days will be more relevant to you than others. The previous cohort covered topics like competitor analysis, insights based on customer calls or testimonials, and of course the usual stuff like content and idea generation, plus hobuncha more.

If you do any of the specific things that Gasper covers, and if you do them on at least an occasional basis, then odds are you will get a great return on both the time and money and that ChatGPT Mastery requires of you, before the 30 days are out.

Beyond that, ChatGPT Mastery can open your mind to what’s possible, give you confidence and a bunch of examples to get you spotting what could be automated in what you do, plus the techniques for how to do it (I’ve already automated a handful of things in what I do, and I have a list of next things to do).

#6. The time required for ChatGPT Mastery is about 15-20 minutes per day for 30 days. The money required is an upfront payment of $199.

I can imagine that one or the other of these is not easy for you to eke out in the current moment.

All I can say is that it’s an investment that’s likely to pay you back many times over, in terms of both time and money. And the sooner you make that investment, the greater and quicker the returns will come.

#7. If you’d like to find out the full details about ChatGPT Mastery, or even to sign up before the cohort kicks off:

https://bejakovic.com/gasper

My Royalty Ronin money breakdown

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In my experience, if you promote a new offer diligently for a few days, questions start to arrive from the heavens that make the promo easier and more effective.

For example, the following bit of manna landed in my inbox yesterday:

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John — you said a lot about the Royalty Ronin, except how or if it made you money?

May I ask — aside from affiliate fees — how did this membership make you money?

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The background is that I’ve been doing an affiliate promotion for Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin for the past few days.

The first day of the promo, I recorded a video and actually talked inside that about money that being inside Ronin myself has made me over the past year.

But I understand not everyone will have watched that video. So lemme give you the gist.

I directly attribute about $60k of income over the past year to being inside Royalty Ronin. That breaks out like this:

#1. Last autumn, I ran two two-day promos — the White Monday campaign for Copy Riddles, and the Shangri-La event for Most Valuable Email.

The core idea for both of those promos came from Travis’s teachings that come as bonuses for being inside Royalty Ronin — specifically, an idea he shares in his Millionaire Math training (inside his Phoneless Sales Machine program).

In total, those two promos made me a little over $30k.

#2. Last summer, I started going through Travis’s Passive Cash Flow Mojo course (another course that used to cost a few thousand dollars, but is now free as a bonus if you sign up to Royalty Ronin).

I went through PCFM a couple of times and followed it pretty much to the “T” (short for Travis) when coming up with the idea for, launching, and then marketing my Daily Email Habit offer.

I haven’t checked the numbers this month yet, but that offer has definitely made me over $25k in the few months it’s been running.

#3. Via lurking in Travis’s Royalty Ronin Skool community, I got clued into an under-the-radar media buyer named Travis Speegle, who is also inside Ronin and is also a Travis Sago acolyte.

Travis Speegle has a course on media buying for growing your email list called MyPeeps, which at some point was being promoted in Ronin.

I bought MyPeeps, went through it, saw it was a great course.

I then reached out to Travis (Speegle) via DM on Skool and proposed I promote his course to my list. He agreed. We did the promo last September.

The result was about $25k in sales, and my cut was somewhere between $10k and $12k (it wasn’t an even 50%, because Travis created the course with Ryan Lee, and I guess has to pay out Ryan some residuals for each new sale).

Add all up all three of the above — and you get over $60k I attribute directly either to ideas I got from Travis, or through being inside the Royalty Ronin community, however mole-like my behavior there might be.

Would I have made some of this money in other ways had I not been in Travis’s world?

Sure. But there’s no doubt in my mind that I have made much more as a result of being in Travis’s Royalty Ronin, and of having gone through his courses — some several times — than the amounts I’ve paid Travis for that access. In fact, I’ve made many times more. Probably 10x, if not 20x.

And that’s why I keep promoting Royalty Ronin to my list.

In fact, that’s why I promoted it to my list last year as well, even before there was an affiliate program — when I had no self-interest in promoting it, other than being the first to clue in my readers to a valuable resource.

And now for your money breakdown, or the lack of it:

Over the past year, I paid Travis Sago $3k for access to Ronin and the associated high-ticket courses. A few weeks ago, I paid him another $1k to renew my access for another year, early.

You, on the other hand, don’t have to make any such dramatic leap. That’s because of two changes that Travis introduced recently to how he charges for access to Royalty Ronin.

The first change is that Travis has started offering the option to sign up to Ronin monthly for $300, instead of yearly for $3k.

$300 is still very expensive if you don’t do anything with the info, or the connections, or with the inspiration available inside Ronin.

On the other hand, if you do apply it, it can be an investment that pays for itself — and quick.

But there’s also the second thing:

To make the decision even easier, and actually entirely risk-free, there’s now a week’s free trial if you’d like to join Ronin, look inside, and see if it’s for you.

If you think of Royalty Ronin like a fancy gym — where the equipment is world-class and trainers are very knowledgeable, but the real value is in the connections you make and motivation you get — then you can think of this week’s free trial as a guest pass you can take advantage of, thanks to my being a member already.

If you’d like to take advantage of your guest pass:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. If you’ve already signed up for a trial of Royalty Ronin via my link above, forward me Travis’s welcome email — the one with “Vroom” in the subject line. I have a small but growing bundle of bonuses that’s waiting for you as a way of saying thanks for taking me up on my recommendation.

The Trump-Fauci money mystery

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I read a fascinating story a few days ago about an interaction between Donald Trump and Anthony Fauci during Trump’s first administration.

It happened well into the covid era. The first vaccines were being released, and the country was ready to get back to business.

Fauci then made a public statement about the possible need for booster shots in order for the vaccines to be effective.

Here’s what happened next, in Fauci’s own words:

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The president was irate, saying that I could not keep doing this to him. He said he loved me, but the country was in trouble, and I was making it worse. He added that the stock market went up only six hundred points in response to the positive phase 1 vaccine news and it should have gone up a thousand points and so I cost the country “one trillion fucking dollars.”

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Stories like this make my head spin. If Trump was right, and it’s very possible he was, then where did that “one trillion fucking dollars” go?

Had Fauci not said anything, would that trillion really be there in the world in any meaningful way?

How can a trillion dollars of actual “value” just appear and disappear, on command, with a few words by the right person in the right place at the right time?

I’ve long been fascinated by the topic of money. Not in the sense of getting my hands on as much of it as I can, but simply understanding what it is.

I have never found a good explanation. Whenever somebody gives me their own explanation, it always seems inadequate.

From what little I understand, money is so confusing because it’s a mix of different things. Hope about the future… willingness to cooperate… built-up knowledge… information about the physical world… information about personal values and preferences, as in, “Do you value this beautiful house? Or do you value the plot of land underneath it more, and you’d be willing to pay to have the house demolished?”

If you have a comprehensive theory of what money is, or a good analogy, or you can point me to some insightful book on the matter, I will be grateful to you.

Meanwhile, one thing is clear to me:

We live in a world of ideas and feelings, which have tremendous real-world influence, even when the physical reality remains almost entirely unchanged, as in the Trump-Fauci story above.

It might be worth thinking about, learning about, getting informed about how to influence those ideas and feelings, including for your own money-getting ambitions.

And on that note, I’d like to remind you I’m making one final, desperate, almost-certain-to-fail-but-possibly-will-succeed push to finish my new 10 Commandments book, full title:

10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen, Hypnotists, Copywriters, Professional Negotiators, Political Propagandists, Stand Up Comedians, and Oscar-Winning Screenwriters

As the very long title suggests, this book will be about 10 techniques or “commandments” used by some of the most effective communicators and influencers in the world, across all history and space, both for good and evil, in their quest to change feelings, plant ideas, and motivate action.

My goal is to finish and publish this book by March 24.

Until then, I will be writing about this book and how it’s progressing, plus what I’m thinking about doing to make it a success when it comes out.

If you are interested in the topic of this book, and you’re thinking you might wanna get a copy when it comes out, click below. I’m planning some launch bonuses and I will be dripping them out early to people on this pre-launch list:

​Click here to get on the bonus-dripping pre-launch list for my new 10 Commandments book​

I believe you’re a 10

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Last night, I finished my second reading of Dave Sandler’s book, You Can’t Teach A Kid To Ride A Bike At A Seminar.

As you might know, Sandler was a sales trainer. His book is about his sales system, which Sandler developed after having something close to a nervous breakdown, day after day, trying to make sales using the old-fashioned approach of tried-and-tested sales techniques — “Would you prefer it in red or in blue?”

Curious thing:

The first real teaching Sandler does in his book is not about the initial step of his sales system, but something he calls I/R theory.

Sandler sets it up with a little exercise. You can try it yourself, right now.

Imagine you’re on a desert island, and you’ve been stripped of all your roles.

In other words, imagine yourself without any professional skill or accomplishment… without family relations and responsibilities… without local, national, and religious affiliation… without all your hobbies, talents, and memberships.

Imagine yourself completely isolated and stripped down to just your identity — your sense of being you.

On a scale from 1 to 10, how do you evaluate that identity?

Many people, says Sandler, rebel at this exercise, and claim that without their roles, they are nothing. Zero!

Many others give their identity a 3 or a 4, or maybe a 5 or a 6.

And yet, Sandler insists that everybody’s identity, yours and mine included, is always a 10, regardless of the roles we play and how well we play them that day.

Sandler gives some sort of argument to make his case. A baby supposedly has a “10” identity… and by induction, it must hold for adults as well. “How could it be otherwise?” Sandler asks, waving his arms a little.

Now, Bejako bear being a particularly skeptical species of bear, chances are good I would have simply rolled my eyes the first time I read this.

But it just so happened that at the same time I was first reading Sandler’s book, I was reading another book also, called The Will To Believe, by American philosopher and psychologist William James.

James gives a rational argument why believing stuff — even without any rational argument for believing it — can make a lot of sense in a lot of situations.

I won’t repeat James’s argument. It doesn’t matter tremendously. Just for me personally, it reminded me something I had realized before.

If you ask me, belief is not something that happens to you. It’s not done to you from the outside, by somebody putting facts and arguments into your head like they put leis around your neck when you arrive to Hawaii.

Rather, believing stuff is a personal, creative act, much like seeing is a personal, creative act.

Remembering this in the context of Sandler’s I/R theory was enough for me to honestly say, “Fine. Let me choose to believe I’m a 10.”

I choose to believe you’re a 10 too.

But why does it matter? Numbers are kind of arbitrary. Why 10? Why not 11, like the guitar amplifier in Spinal Tap?

You can label the numbers how you will. The important thing, says Sandler, is that you will find ways to make your role performance — in his case, sales success — fit your identity, your self-image.

So if have a self-image of, say, 6 out of 10, and if things in your life go bad, down to 2, you will find a way to get back to normal, back to 6.

On the other hand, if things go too well — a 9 or a 10 — you will find a way to get back to normal, too.

And if you’ve ever wondered why things never stay too good for you — why they never stay at a 9 or a 10 — maybe this is an explanation why.

Maybe try imagining yourself on a desert island, just you without any roles you play, and choose to believe you are in fact a 10.

If you do give it a go, let me know how it works out.

And as for making sales, and connecting with people, and writing day after day without quitting because things have gotten too uncomfortably good, you might like my Daily Email Habit service. For more info on that:

​https://bejakovic.com/deh

The BCG Recurring Income Matrix

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At the start of this year, I wrote about three themes I had set for myself. Theme #1 was more recurring income.

To help me (and maybe you) get there, I’ve come up with the BCG (Bejakovic Consulting Group) Recurring Income Matrix.

Maybe know the Growth-Share Matrix by that other “BCG,” Boston Consulting Group. (The imposters!)

Their matrix asks two questions about a product or company — low/high market share, fast/slow growth. The result are four quadrants:

3. ??? | 4. Star

1. Dog | 2. Cash Cow

I don’t want to even dignify those other BCG people by explaining what their stupid animal quadrants are about.

But I do like the matrix idea.

So I decided to create my own for recurring income. My questions about recurring income, the ones dear to my heart are:

1. Does it require personal authority to sell?

2. Does it require personal involvement to deliver?

I thought about the four yes/no combinations. And so I’d like to present to you the Bejakovic Consulting Group Recurring Income Matrix:

3. Hosting on QVC   | 4. Renting out

1. Flipping burgers    | 2. Pushing the sled

Let me explain the quadrants in order:

#1. The lower left is flipping burgers. It doesn’t require personal authority to sell, but it does require personal involvement to deliver.

In other words, this is a regular job, or at least most regular jobs, except those few regular jobs where you’re truly irreplaceable.

Flipping burgers is a steady paycheck, provided by somebody else, as long as you keep working. Fair enough. Unfortunately, due to a genetic disorder, I find myself highly allergic to any prolonged time spent in this quadrant.

#2. The lower right is pushing the sled. It requires personal authority to sell, and also requires personal involvement to deliver.

This is most recurring income plays for solopreneurs and small info publishers online. Think paid newsletters, paid memberships, coaching, etc.

I call it pushing the sled because it’s like the sled at the gym — you gotta put in a lot of effort to get it moving, and as soon as you stop, it stops.

That might sound like a raw deal. But because it requires personal authority to sell, it tends to pay better per unit of work compared to flipping burgers. (Plus, if you’re the type to enjoy discipline-and-punish activities like Crossfit, you can even convince yourself that pushing the sled has salutary effects.)

#3. The upper left is hosting on QVC. It requires personal authority to sell, but doesn’t require personal authority to deliver.

This is where you trade on your good name, your charisma, or your previous success to promote something that will pay you for a time to come.

My best example of this is George Foreman, who allowed his name to be put on a grill and who appeared in infomercials to promote the product. The result was $200M in royalties and licensing fees into George’s pocket over the years.

This might seem out of reach for mere mortals. But if you have an audience, it’s really what recommending a specific tool in a crowded category is about (eg. ​Convertkit, sign up for it because it’s what I use​). Also, I’d put recurring income like copywriting royalties into this quadrant.

#4. Finally, the upper right is the “renting out” quadrant. It doesn’t require personal authority to sell, and it doesn’t require personal involvement to deliver.

I thought of calling this the “cheating” quadrant because that’s how it can feel, at least if you’re coming at it with a perspective like mine, of selling info products via daily emails.

But really, this quadrant is familiar enough. If you have a lot of money already, it’s what rental income or stock dividends are all about. If you don’t have a lot of money yet, well, there’s ways around that that still make living in this quadrant possible. But that’s really a topic for a $5k course.

Final point:

You can move from quadrant to quadrant.

If you appear on QVC once to endorse a product, that appearance can be recorded and replayed over and over, which basically puts you into the renting out quadrant, as long as somebody else drives viewers to the recording.

If you’re pushing the sled now, you can eventually delegate or automate the delivery and move yourself into the QVC host position.

And if you’re in the flipping burgers quadrant, you can jump straight to renting out quadrant if you have the money or know-how… or you can build up your personal authority, so you can go to the #2 or #3 quadrants.

On that last note, if you would like to build up your personal authority, I have a recurring service to help you do that.

I am still creating this service by hand, day-by-day, instead of automating or delegating, putting me squarely into the #2 quadrant.

Maybe that will change in the future. But for now, I keep pushing the sled, because I tell myself it’s good for me.

In any case, if you’d like my help in building up your personal authority, so you can sell things that pay you over and over:

https://bejakovic.com/deh